Paul Rauch OUT at 'Y&R'

[ranger1rg]

carld2, i respect you as a poster and someone who's forgotten more about the soaps than i know.

however, i just don't understand how you can gut so many characters from y&r and still have y&r. yes, it technically could be done, but it's not realistic, so i don't know how to react when so much is called awful. yes, the writing for some characters is bad, but that doesn't mean the character should be written out. what would be get instead? a poorly written new character???

calling nick and victoria "worthless" doesn't seem fair to me. do i want nick to be stronger and go after his !@#$%^&*] father? yeah, but i don't want him written out. one reason i've loved y&r over the years is because characters are kept "forever." sanctimonious jack can get on my nerves, but "done" as a character? i'm just not in favor of a y&r without the abbotts. i also think billy and victoria are good together, realizing that most people here dislike BM and AH. i like them both, and to be honest, i don't want heather tom back. i loved her, but that time has past on y&r.

i also disagree about ronan, because i find jeff branson's take on him interesting. i don't think he's boring at all, and i'd rather have that subtle, nuanced acting than someone who over-emotes on every frickin line. chloe is "pointless"? i don't get it. she's been a bitch for the past week, and i don't like the character regression, but i love EH as an actress, and the character has a lot of ties to others. marcy rylan as abby has been a great cast addition, even though i liked the stronger, wilder abby.

i do agree with you about malcolm as a disaster, total and complete. his thug attitude this past week sealed it for me, again. tucker is definitely a disappointment, but that could easily be rectified if the writers cared. jana's time is up....kevin is not a leading man and the pairing with chloe is unrealistic....daniel is used up....i still miss vail bloom a heather.

i guess i'm just not as critical as others about y&r, maybe not as demanding. that may be a fault, i know. to be honest, though, different doesn't mean better to me. how would it work to slowly phase out the characters and then bring them back if things get better? what would get better?

when and if i get to the point of disliking so many characters/actors, i'll just stop watching the show. i know many have done that, but i think others watch it but lie and say they don't.

[Sylph]

Ignore it, comment on it, hate it, love it... So many various ways to react.

The answer might surprise you.

I must say, half the time – wait, all the time, I completely fail at understanding Carl's adjectives dispersed like this in equal measure. They usually end in that suffix, -less, but I have absolutely no idea what exactly do they mean.

Yeah, yeah, we know, we know... That's an old meme, no one pays any attention to it anymore.

[DeeeDee]

+1.

[DRW50]

I respect you too, and I'm sure you remember as much as I do.

Do we still have Y&R? I don't recognize anything about the Y&R I grew up with. I think keeping some of the older cast members is a way to maintain links to the past while building a future. Building a future is something that MAB/Rauch/Sheffer have consistently failed at doing. We have poor new characters, poor recasts, just poor decisions all around.

I don't really expect all the people I mentioned to be fired, so some of them would still stay around and that would provide continuity. But SOME have to go, surely. The show is suffocating from these empty characters who take up airtime only because of laziness, backstage games, and past glories.

Characters aren't kept forever on today's Y&R. The show has happily gotten rid of or all but gotten rid of longtime characters. Even in old school Y&R, Bill Bell got rid of longtime characters if he thought they had reached their limit.

I don't care about Nick being stronger, because I don't believe Morrow can or will ever do that. He is an extremely lazy actor whose bad habits are probably irreversible. Nick is a slut, a hypocrite, and a bump on a log. I haven't gotten anything out of any story he has been in in years and years. They have burned out everything with him.

Victoria is so weak and her character makes no sense - she wants to be a mother, then she all but abandons her child for years and then suddenly goes back to wanting to be a mother more than anything. She has no purpose beyond the same two or three scenes with Billy and Victor. If I liked her with Billy Miller then I might care more but generally I think they only stuck her with Billy because they want their beloved Miller to be glued to the Newmans, which they've been trying to do since he first started. I don't think Heather Tom should come back. I think Victoria needs a long rest. She is probably, along with Tad on AMC, the most depleted character I've seen on a soap.

I loved Jack for years, I really did, but everything about the character has been taken away. He's weak, his feud with Victor was decided long ago - he can't even beat Nick, much less Victor. His spark, his humor, his family are all pretty much gone. He is a flunky for Phyllis. If Jack disappeared tomorrow, would you notice?

I don't mind subtle, nuanced acting, but I don't see anything to Ronan. He just seems sullen, his relationship with Nina was completely skipped over, they made sure to kill off his parents because they see what could have been fascinating backstory as a loose end, and the show's main priority is on duller than dirt relationships with people he has no chemistry with. Who is Ronan? What is he?

I think Liz Hendrickson is a decent actress, but what are Chloe's ties? She has a child with Billy that he ignores anyway. She is daughter to a bit player. Has Chloe ever fit into the canvas? Has any story she's been in ever done anything but peter out? Has she ever had chemistry with anyone? Or is she just there because the show likes LH?

Believe me, I've done that with Y&R before. Even now I mostly watch through the boards, and my viewing is sporadic. I think it's a sign of my caring about Y&R that I even want to make these changes, and that I'm not just saying "cancel this."

[DaytimeFan]

Bill Bell did it once before and he only kept Kay and Jill.

[Soapsuds]

Which Y&R executive are you??? I totally agree with Carl and I am being honest when i say I have stopped watching Y&R. So many truths about what Carl said....awful recssting...cough..heather..cough...ronan..cough...so many actors just phoning it in and bad writing all equal to an unwatchable show.

[JimTolkien]

Carl, this is a lengthy list you have going here LOL. But I have to comment even though this show is not worth the effort it once did. There are only a few characters I would ever get rid of on this show and I would never get rid of my vets..NOPE. We need the continuity because frankly most fans who are not on msg boards are comfortable with that and I am speaking of just Y&R. There has always been that stability that the show is noted for. But I refuse to lay blame on most of the actors you have mentioned here, I just will not do it.

I BLAME the entire thing on MAB and her "writing team", but MOSTLY MAB. I have read people blaming HS/PR/SH for a lot of things but I firmly believe that MAB is the one driving all of this and sitting back and letting the others get blamed for it, because well, she can. It's going to catch up to her eventually, maybe it's beginning to, who knows. And that to me makes her a COWARD and how apropro, she shows cowardice in her writing as well - that's why her storylines are so predictable because she steals from the previous writers, change it up (rather make it worse) instead of trying to come up with her own stuff. It's interesting because her killing off Cane is probably the bravest thing I have ever seen her do since she came to the show. Can she be brilliant and drive some good stories from it. I hope so but I don't think so because as I said, she is a cowardly writer.

I commend most of our vets for trying to put forth their best efforts on screen, I really do. Trying to convince me that watching/swallowing sh#t is great entertainment is no easy feat. But look at what they have to work with. No wonder it looks like they are phoning it in sometimes. The storylines they have been getting all suck and they know it, they have had better writers who knew how to write for their characters, make them edgy without making them unrootable and unrecognizable. But I have a feeling most are afraid to say anything or show any disagreement as their character maybe the next one to end up in a woodchipper.

In MAB's quest for absolute power and to prove that she has a vision (can she PLEASEEEEE give me an idea of what it is and when I can see it), and damn it, by god she the BOSS and it is her show now, she has sacrificed the integrity and quality that even when the show was not all that great either with writers before her we always held Y&R to a certain standard. Not only that, the reactions that people bring up about the actors are usually a reaction from the writing. I guess even they are finding out that they maybe good actors but it's a tad difficult to sell something that they themselves are not buying. Are the writers even buying what they are trying to sell, do they know what they are selling - from the looks of things, it appears they just write different sh#t, throw it against the wall and see which one has enough strength in it to stick to the writing board!! And that's just for one eppy probably - can't imagine what writing the show for a week must be like!!

I don't think I have ever been as disappointed in a headwriter as I am in her. I expected so much more and better from her. I guess I was suckered into her having the last name of Bell. I just hope she can turn this around so I can feel differently.

[bellcurve]

Ain't that the honest to God's truth? Seriously, if I had a dollar for everytime someone said, "I'm no longer watching (insert soap/network/talk show)" or "I'm not longer posting on this board," I'd have Friday night's bar tab paid.

[Bright Eyes]

Right. No matter what the subject, why waste time talking in absolutes. I have said in the past, "No, Michael, do not watch another 3 hour Keeping Up with the Kardashians marathon." But do I listen? Of course not. I'm only human.

[Sylph]

Seriously. It's just irksome, off-putting and kills the will to post.

In other news, every time I see that acronym MAB, I think of Queen Mab and Miranda Richardson playing her in Merlin.

[DRW50]

I think a number of actors deserve blame, even if they are not as responsible as MAB. A number of the show's leading actors are very, very willing to go to the press and talk about what they want, and they also blatantly tank scenes or stories if the material is not what satisfies them.

I would keep continuity by keeping the characters I mentioned, and I'm sure some others would also stay, even if I would rather never see them again, like Nick. That dead weight is probably going nowhere until the last episode. In terms of the current cast and continuity, I think you only really need Katherine and Victor (the other vets like Nikki, Jill, and Nina, I would keep because I think they're great and I love them, not because I think the show can't survive without them). Victor makes me sick in recent years but I know how popular he is with a lot of viewers, especially male viewers. I would also say I want to keep Paul, because Paul was one of my favorite characters for a long time, but I don't think they will ever write for him again. I hope they will someday.

I don't believe there is any stability on today's Y&R. If people want continuity or stability then they would have already tuned out, IMO. I believe that the key to Y&R's future is to get rid of the many layers of dead weight currently suffocating the canvas, and to figure out what makes the show work. Of course I'd get rid of MAB too, because the show can't improve as long as MAB or the hacks Sheffer and Hamner are still there, but I think that there is a real sense of decay and a big part of that comes from how many of the show's actors play their scenes.

[SFK]

And I think of Mercutio's Queen Mab speech.

[DeeeDee]

Exactly.

[Saving ATWT]

I agree with many of the above comments; however, Y&R still manages to get about 5m viewers a day when the rest of the pack struggles to pull 2.5m. I think the soaps strong ratings are all about the maintaining of a stable cast. Even duds like Nick are familiar to many viewers.

The soap is becoming a little too vet heavy. ATWT was on top for 20 years but crashed in the late 1970's for the same reason: Aging vets with no up and coming talent to replace them. I respect the fact that Y&R has grown core families (Billy, Victoria, Cloe, Nick, Adam)as opposed to back burnering them like ATWT did with the Hughes/Staurts.

I blame a lot of the current problems on Raunch. He ruined GL and a boat load of other shows.

[DRW50]

Y&R has no core families now as far as I can see. The Chancellors are Katherine and a bunch of mouth-breathing ciphers she props. The Abbotts have no interest in each other. The Winters show up a few days a month to wring their hands over Lily or play out a script from 2002. The only ones who are written as being related are the Newmans, and that's only based on all-knowing Victor and the petulant brats who don't know their place.

I would put Y&R's ratings down to timeslot and Rauch/MAB/Sheffer being adept at stunts to get attention. The cast still has some standouts but is by and large the worst its ever been IMO, thanks to a lot of wasted talent, lazy actors, bad actors, and horribly miscast roles. I also wouldn't call the cast all that stable. If it was then Y&R would not feel the need to constantly stunt cast. Stunt casting is code for "We don't like our actors; they're not good enough."

I'm also not sure how a show can be vet-heavy when only one of them (Victor) ever has a storyline. Do you count Phyllis, Nick, or Sharon as a veteran? I guess you can, but since Nick is written as a frat boy and Sharon is written as a brain-dead ingenue it's not exactly the same situation as what ATWT had with Kim or Bob or Dan all those years ago. If anything Y&R suffers from characters who refuse to act their age. There is no tier system at Y&R, which is what a good show should have. The 40somethings act like twentysomethings, so do the 30somethings, and so on.